“The fat sun stalls by the phone masts. Anti-climb paint turns sulphurous on school gates and lampposts. In Willesden people go barefoot, the streets turn European, there is […]
English literature
White Teeth
“What is past is prologue.” — William Shakespeare (Epigraph in White Teeth) Part One: Archie 1974, 1945 The novel opens with Archie Jones, a middle-aged Englishman, attempting suicide […]
English literature
The Child in Time
“Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours […]
English literature
On Chesil Beach
“They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.” Chapter […]
English literature
Enduring Love
“The beginning is simple to mark.” — Ian McEwan, Enduring Love Chapter 1 The novel opens with a dramatic and tragic hot-air balloon accident. Joe Rose, a science […]
English literature
Saturday
“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.” — Ian McEwan, Saturday […]
English literature
Atonement
“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.” Part One: 1935 The […]
English literature
Never Let Me Go
“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on […]
English literature
The Remains of the Day
“After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?” Prologue: […]
English literature
Brideshead Revisited
“I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they.” — Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited Prologue: Et in Arcadia Ego Captain Charles Ryder, a […]